Mean Girls

The high-school hazing comedy Mean Girls--adapted by Tina Fey from Rosalind Wiseman's book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence--plays like Heathers with the edges filed down a bit. That may sound like damnation with faint praise, but Mean Girls is the kind of smooth, clever (and rare) entertainment that critics and audiences can all enjoy, guilt-free.

Like Heathers, Mean Girls penetrates the secret world of a nasty clique of girls, here called the Plastics. When home-school evacuee Cady Heron (Lohan), who spent much of her youth in Africa, takes in her first day of public school, it's a jungle out there. Befriended by two oft-ridiculed misfits--goth chick Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and gay youth Damian (Daniel Franzese)--Cady finds herself drawn to the Plastics, ostensibly at first to spy on the self-absorbed fashion plates and undermine them; soon, Cady finds herself becoming the role she plays, becoming--in fact--what she hates.

Lessons, naturally, are to be learned, but in admirable satiric fashion, as whipped up by Fey ("Weekend Update" co-host and co-head-writer for Saturday Night Live) and director Mark Waters (The House of Yes, Freaky Friday). Fey and producer Lorne Michaels (the guru of SNL) have help from their friends--Tim Meadows, Amy Poehler, and Ana Gasteyer--but the young ensemble pulls its weight, with Freaky Friday star Lohan solid in the lead. The supporting youngsters are diverse, without falling into the easy ethnic stereotypes (absent are the unrealistic cartoon accents teen-movie directors usually demand for maximum "comedy").

Fey's sexy-smart style, exploited effectively in her role as semi-cool teacher Ms. Norbury, detonates a cluster-bomb of snappily paced humorous approaches: cultural detail (the girls' parlance includes the term "half a virgin"), visual allusions (Lord of the Flies and Lean on Me both crop up), and highly tuned absurdity: seen in passing, Regina's little sister emulates Kelis's "Milkshake" video and "Girls Gone Wild" in the background, an ominous Plastic in training.

In its Blu-ray debut, Mean Girls looks better than it ever has on home video. Though it won't blow you way with maximal Blu-ray dazzle, the image is colorful, stable, and nicely detailed, and if the lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix likewise fails to wow, it nicely maximizes the source material.

The bonus features are extensive, beginning with a drily funny commentary by director Mark Waters, screenwriter/actress Tina Fey and producer Lorne Michaels.